Queen’s Speech

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty]

My Lords, I want to talk about the arts and the cultural sector, but to get to that point I feel that I have to talk about something else first, something that is in the way and which I have to get past: the economic policy of this Government, which in the last two years has cast a shadow over almost every topic that gets debated in Parliament.

Like a growing number of people, I do not believe in the austerity measures. Why do I say this? I am not an economist. I studied economics for one year at undergraduate level and I probably learnt three things: first, that there are many different economic policies; secondly, that there is much argument about which policies actually succeed—if any; and, thirdly and most importantly, that no economic policy can be separated from political intent. Austerity is no exception. It is not a politically neutral measure, although this Government have done a pretty good job so far of convincing the public that austerity is the only way and has nothing to do with ideology.

I do not agree with the political intent behind austerity measures. Many economists also do not believe that austerity works, and indeed see this measure as perverse, eccentric and historically discredited. The views of these economists, including Nobel prize winners such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, have not until now been championed enough—although I think that the tide is turning—because the parties in power in Europe have not been sympathetic; nor have they yet been championed enough by the Opposition in our Parliament, who have yet to state that they would reverse the cuts.

The arts, the cultural sector and the creative industries are precisely the areas in which this country should be investing for growth, and we should be reversing the cuts to do so—cuts, I should say, to an investment that has always been small by Treasury standards. To their credit, the previous Administration appreciated that such investment effects cultural growth, social regeneration, improvement of the environment and economic growth, and gave the arts a prominent place in their 2010 manifesto.

The Arts Council has this month released a guidance document for arts organisations to carry out their own economic impact assessments, which, through the case studies featured, prove the point of such organisations’ worth—yet again. I do not believe that organisations should be doing this, as too many are struggling enough with their finances anyway. But the two-year-old case studies of Anvil Arts in Basingstoke and of the AV Festival in the north-east gave results that stunned even local people. For example, in 2010 it was assessed that Anvil Arts contributed £6.2 million per year to Basingstoke’s economy, more than a fivefold return on the borough council’s investment.

The arts community has always known of the strong multiplier effect of the cultural sector, which politicians with any nous would pick up on. Yet, strangely for a Government who profess a desire for economic recovery, the arts have suffered an enormous demotion politically in the past two years. As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, pointed out, there is no mention of the arts or the creative industries—or innovation for that matter—in the Queen’s Speech. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, that there is no sense of strategy for the arts and culture. It is almost as though, in the past two years, the arts have become invisible as far as the Government are concerned. The cultural sector almost failed to appear in the national planning policy framework. Only a strong campaign prevented that. It was for the sector a big fall from grace from being, under the previous Administration, one of the four pillars of sustainable development.

Worst of all, one only needs to go on to the Lost Arts website to see the roll call of those arts organisations that have been drastically cut, are on the brink of folding or have now gone under, all as a result of cuts to state funding. Those organisations include Durham City Arts, now closed; the Theatre Writing Partnership, based in Nottingham and formed more than 10 years ago, which will close next month; Croydon’s Warehouse Theatre, which may well close; and Museums Sheffield, which has had to make a scandalously large number of redundancies—45 altogether. The list goes on and on.

This is a Government who neither properly appreciate the significance of long-term support for the arts nor understand the state’s crucial role at the grass-roots level or the preservation of our cultural history. If this Government were taking a long-term view, they would not have introduced the levy of VAT on approved alterations to listed buildings, nor would they have effectively capped charitable giving, which will have a hugely detrimental effect on the larger, more established organisations. I hope that both these measures will be reversed and that the Minister will respond on them.

The Government have, quite correctly, launched a very smart advertising campaign abroad leading up to the Olympics and Paralympics—the GREAT campaign —but it is an irony that, at the same time, they have so drastically reduced funding to the culture that the campaign is promoting.

This is a Government who react most when the short-term commercial possibilities of the creative industries are right in front of their nose. Tax breaks to investors in the form of the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme are clearly welcome, although Steve Karmeinsky of City Meets Tech points out that there need to be tax breaks also for the start-up companies in which investors have an interest.

Robert Redford was quite right to slap David Cameron down for calling for the funding only of “commercial” cinema. Sundance, which, as we know, has been launched as a festival in the UK, was set up on the opposite premise: from the point of view of the film-makers. To make a general point, artists do the work that they do and then an attempt should be made to find audiences. This is a necessary risk at the level of the individual artist and the individual company. Yet paradoxically perhaps, at the larger scale—to take the sector as a whole—it is, as I have described, no risk at all to invest; it is absolutely the opposite. If we continue to cut the grass roots, to threaten arts education and to continue with local authority cuts to the arts, music and libraries, the mainstream also will be become fundamentally damaged—the commercial cinema and the commercial theatre, which are fed by the grass roots. This Government should give long-term support to the arts and cultural sector to promote cultural growth and help to kick-start this country’s economy. That is a plan for growth.